The headache was no longer something she thought about.  It simply was--the same way the ache in her healing fingers was, the same way that the gash in the horizon above Auchindoun was.  The gash bleed Light and leaked music: blinding, deafening, swaddling the world until the only darkness left was behind her eyes and the only silence left was in her own throat.  

They waited for the knight and the priestess to return.  And while they waited, draenei spirits processed through the landscape like veiled women walking towards the wedding altar.  They headed towards the light, towards the music.  She wondered how long it had been since the world saw so much death.  She wondered where the orcs’ spirits went but she didn’t ask: none of her companions would know the answer and the question would only bring her dismissive looks that did nothing but hammer home how alien they really were.

“I know what you are.”  The voice spoke in Draenei, a language she did not know well.

The witch turned.  A spirit was watching her--a draenei woman with horns that curved above her brow like a crescent moon.  She had seen this spirit days ago, had thought her long gone into the Light.  “What am I?”  Her voice was rusty from disuse.

“A spirit-witch.  You bind souls into flesh like the Auchenai bind them into their constructs.”  Even in death the draenei’s eyes were a pale, piercing blue; they went through the witch’s stomach like a needle through a butterfly.

“What does it matter?  Will you turn me in to your priests so that they can root me out?”  This world might not know the word “necromancer”, might not know the Scourge, but she was no more welcome here than she had been on Azeroth.  

“I want your help.”

Her muscles stiffened, the shock of the words transmuting her for a moment from flesh to stone.  “No.  You don’t.”  Then she stood and turned away.

The spirit grabbed her wrist.  “Please!  My children--they are orphans now.  I need to get back to them.”

“Then ask your priests.  Perhaps they will give you one of their construct bodies.”

“Even if they did, a spirit guardian’s duties do not include raising children.  Please.  I know you can--you made the gold-eyed one, didn’t you?”

The witch’s eyes flickered back towards their camp, where Tae waited.  “Yes.  But it was a different time.  It is a dark magic to bind a spirit within its own dead flesh.  I have given it up.”  She jerked her wrist away from the spirit’s grasp.

“Is your purity worth more than my children?”  The spirit hissed.

She froze again.  “You do not know what you are asking for.  Your flesh will break and rot and will not heal.  Your emotions will be locked away from you--encased in ice you cannot melt--save for rage, you will always have rage.  Worms will eat their way through your eyes, your chest.  The only pleasure you will feel will be when you cause another living creature pain.  The Light will burn instead of heal you.  Is that what you want raising your children?”

“The gold-eyed one is not like that.”

“I cannot promise you will be like him.”

The spirit went silent for a moment, faded to nothing but dim outlines and gleaming eyes.  The witch hoped she would turn away and move towards Auchindoun like the others.  But she did not.  Instead she reformed, with sharper edges than before.  “Better than letting them be raised by loss, by absence, by the fading memory of love and the reality of war.  I love them, witch, and if you had ever loved anyone so much you would know that death and rage is not enough to snuff out that love.”

She had one more arrow in her quiver, one more chance to strike home and convince this woman to leave.  “There is something else.”

“What?”

“If I do this, you will be my creature.  Mine to call.  Mine to command.  Mine to slay.  Your will, ultimately, will no longer be your own.”

A low hiss of shock escaped from the spirit’s throat.  “Would you?”

“I am no Auchenai.”

The spirit shivered, shimmered.  “I need to consider.”  She left on hooves that no longer quite touched the ground.